


Stephanie Brown and the No Good, Very Chaotic Freshman Year

by lunarpaddle



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: College, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, but she's sure trying, shes a grumpy bitch with anger issues in contrast to everyone else, steph is only a sunshine girl in contrast to the batfam, which reallllly isnt saying much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22814506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarpaddle/pseuds/lunarpaddle
Summary: Steph finds out living a normal college life isn't as easy as it seems.AKAWhat do you mean, most people can't hack into police files?AKASeriously you guys, fuck college.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake
Comments: 3
Kudos: 98





	Stephanie Brown and the No Good, Very Chaotic Freshman Year

Steph flopped down onto the bed in her new dorm room, and winced. Time was, she was used to much rougher sleeping conditions, but fancy Wayne Manor king sized beds had ruined her. That, and a few years of heroing had left most of her body in...less than ideal condition.

But that was the point of all this, she supposed - unlike most heroes, she’d never had much in terms of a normal life, and she’d never be able to have a convincing cover identity if she didn’t work out how to at least appear like your average, every day citizen. Take Annabelle, next door - International Development student (whatever that meant), two living parents who’d cheerfully helped her move in, a room covered in posters and pictures and a cheerful disposition. 

Not that Steph’s disposition wasn’t cheerful, it was just - well, it was just that carefully curated kind of cheerful designed to terrify street thugs and frustrate supervillains.

Annabelle had been perfectly polite, but between the slightly scared look in her eyes and the awkward retreat to her room Steph didn’t think she’d be eager to make friends.

\---

“Jeez, what the fuck did that to you?”

Barely a week in, and the list of problems had doubled, tripled, quadrupled in length - amongst them, apparently most people didn’t have a huge collection of large combat scars clearly visible. She’d taken to wearing long sleeved shirts or baggy hoodies, but the impulse to roll her sleeves up without thinking was something she had yet to shake.

“Building collapse a couple years ago,” she replied, not looking up from note-taking - none of what this professor was saying seemed useful or relevant in any way, but it stopped people trying to make friends with her.

(The scar in question had, actually, been from a building collapse, albeit one she caused.)

“Damn, that’s cool! I mean, uh, probably not for you, but it looks really cool!” Well, it usually stopped people trying to make friends with her. She looked up to see a kid about her age, short brown hair, wearing a massive brightly coloured jacket that put even her usual garish fashion to shame.

They actually seemed pretty cool, but she knew how the next bit went. 

“If you think that’s cool, you should see the one on my leg!” she tried her best to give a warm smile, to laugh a bit, to be friendly - and waited for the inevitable backing off.

She wasn’t expecting the outburst of cackling laughter that briefly drew them the ire of the professor, nor the quiet response after.

“You should see the one on mine,” they whispered, lifting their leg to reveal a brightly painted prosthetic, “it’s killer.” 

(Steph had found this funny enough by itself, but the later reveal that Brandon had lost their leg to a Killer Croc attack had had her in fresh fits of laughter.)

\---

Coming up to the end of the first semester, she spent more time in Brandon’s dorm with their friends than in her own - she had, perhaps, been getting a bit ahead of herself when she thought she’d never be able to make friends here. This was why she needed this - too much time around the emo bat gang had rubbed off on her.

Alas, with the new level of comfort, her guard had begun to drop, and it was coming up to finals that this finally backfired on her.

“Shit! I swear this is what I changed the password to!” Steph glanced over at Nessa’s screen to see that she was locked out of the college’s secure file storage system - designed by someone who knew very little about actual infosec, but had watched a whole lot of early 2000s powerpoints on the importance of making users change their password Every Single Month.

“Can’t you get IT to reset it?” she asked.

“They don’t open till tomorrow, and this is due tonight!” Steph sighed, and put her own laptop aside to take Nessa’s from her. 

“Give me a sec, I’ll sort it.” She’d done this herself before, and had seen little need to go to IT when the security in place was so ineffective. A few quick tricks got her in without even needing the standard USB she used for this stuff, and she passed the laptop back after a couple minutes.

And Then she noticed the shocked silence.

“I’m, uh...good with computers?”

\---

“Lina?” Steph’s friend turned her head in shock from her position curled up in the middle of the roof, freezing wind roaring past them.

“S-stephanie? How - how did you find me?” Lina was the only other one of their friends to stay for the break, and she hadn’t shown up for their scheduled hangout - phone calls had gone to voicemail, neighbours hadn’t had a clue where she was, and eventually a call to Babs had lead her to an easily accessible rooftop on campus.

Steph shrugged. “You know me, I’m a right computer whiz - what the fuck are you doing up here?”

It turned out Lina’s dad was far from happy with her decision to remain at college for the break, and was threatening to cut off her college funding if she didn’t come home - something which was far from ideal, given the information Oracle was whispering in her ear about violent criminal records and hospital reports concerning both Lina and her mother that were heartbreakingly familiar.

They talked, and Steph told her friend what she could about her own history, and then they just sat there, the winter gales slowly calming as the sun began to set.

She didn’t think she’d be able to cover for Lina’s father’s arrest with her usual excuses about computer skills, and she certainly wouldn’t be able to cover for the complete payment of Lina’s college bills with that - but superhero or not, she was hardly going to stand by and do nothing.

She’d find a good excuse.

\---

The problem was, people just wouldn’t stop asking questions.

Everyone was back now and the curiosity as to what on earth was up with Stephanie Brown was only growing, with Brandon especially picking up on every quirk or unusual talent with a deadly gleam in their eyes to rival Tim’s when he was up to mischief.  
Speaking of which -

“Hey Steph! I stopped by your room, but your dorm mates said you usually hang out over here?” Annabelle was a fucking traitor.

“Tim, I love you but you really really can’t be here-” A high pitched screech came from behind her and she cursed internally.

“Is that Tim Drake-Wayne?”

As chaos erupted around her, Tim casually introducing himself and shaking hands - who the fuck shakes hands, they were college students - she quietly resolved to never, ever, tell any of them about her daily video calls with Cass, slowly rebuilding their friendship, nor about the hardly subtle overtones of something more on the horizon.

\---

“Die, you uneducated fools!” 

In retrospect, she should have seen this coming - of course her boring professor would turn out to be a secret Joker wannabe. Why not, right.

She didn’t have any kind of excuse for why she had Joker venom antidotes on her to give to her friends, but none of them seemed interested in interrogating her currently - besides, given what she was about to have to do, she doubted her secret identity was going to stay intact much longer. She really wasn’t good at this whole normal life thing.

“Guys, I need you to stay here - I’m gonna go take care of this asshole before anyone else can get hurt, but I can’t do that if y’all get in the way, kay?”

“I knew it!” Brandon crowed, far less affected by the situation than they should be. “You’re the Batman!”

Holy shit.

“Brandon, that’s absolutely fucking hilarious, but I really have to go - stay safe, you dumb fucks.”

She pulled on the spoiler hood as she walked into the chaos, hoping that between that and the purple hoodie her identity wouldn’t be revealed to anyone besides, well, anyone who actually knew her.

Fucking college.

\---

“Huh, I’ve never even heard of Spoiler.” Steph rolled her eyes as she continued packing her things.

“Wow, thanks Nessa. Real ego booster.”

“She has a point, Steph. It’s not like anyone’s hunting you or shit, why the big deal about leaving?” 

And wasn’t that a complicated question. She knew she could probably stay, but - 

But she just couldn’t stay out of things! Like, sure, the professor being a villain thing was just a fluke, but she’d lost count of how many times she’d subtly intervened with other people’s shit just this semester - she hadn’t started leading a normal life, not really, she’d just turned into a knock off oracle doing a journalism degree.

“I’m just not cut out for this stuff, Bran. You know I nearly failed Investigative Journalism 101? I literally systematically destroyed my dad’s entire supervillain career by investigating him and publishing it!” She angrily tugged the zip of the suitcase closed as Cass walked into the room. “I’ll still visit, and you can give me a call if you need anything, but - god, fuck college, guys.”

Brandon sighed, and turned to Cass. “Look after grumpy here, okay?”

Cass gave her an incredulous look.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Apparently bubbly and optimistic for a bat is still emo as shit for everyone else.”

Cass giggled, and turned back to Brandon. “Do not worry - I have plenty of experience looking after this one. You know, she once accidentally started a gang war?” Oh god.

“Nope, nuh uh, we aren’t doing this,” she picked up her case and began dragging Cass out the door. “Bye guys, nice meeting you, have good lives!”

At least she got to go back to comfy beds now.


End file.
